This week, I had the privilege of joining colleagues from the Reach Foundation’s Southwest 100 leadership programme on our spring study tour to schools in Birmingham.
In the autumn term, we travelled to London and were fortunate enough to visit some of the top‑performing schools in the country. This spring tour provided an opportunity to see how some of Birmingham’s most successful schools are achieving exceptional outcomes for the communities they serve.
We are 20 senior leaders from the Southwest—a region where schools face complex challenges and where educational outcomes consistently lag behind other parts of the country.
London vs Birmingham
London consistently outperforms other regions in terms of outcomes, despite significant deprivation. A range of factors contribute to this, including population density, sheer number of schools, a larger talent pool, greater ethnic diversity supporting strong educational values at home, and higher‑than‑average funding. But to attribute London’s success solely to these factors is to miss the point—and the learning opportunity. Ultimately, despite regional variation, far more unites our schools than divides them.
In contrast, Birmingham shares more contextual similarities with regions like ours:
Plymouth and Birmingham are both core cities experiencing the “doughnut effect”—significant suburban investment surrounding a more challenged urban centre.
Both the Southwest and West Midlands have a rural–urban mix, with vast rural areas feeding into market towns and city hubs, creating similar pressures on transport, recruitment, and social mobility.
Economically, the West Midlands and Southwest have comparable levels of median weekly pay, meaning the challenges facing families feel very familiar.
This was always going to be a rich learning opportunity. With so much to take in, we deliberately focused on what great leaders do to develop great teachers, and how this plays out in great schools.
Q3 Academy Langley
Q3 Langley is a school proud—and bold—enough to rethink what is possible. They tackle core challenges with innovative solutions and, as a result, achieve excellent outcomes for the community they serve.
Family lunch
One standout example is their “family lunch,” where every student, with military precision, eats together in year groups. Tutor groups are divided into three families, each named after a global university. Every student eats the same set menu, ensuring a high‑quality, nutritious meal each day.
During the meal:
Students discuss a “thought for the day”, guided by the Head of Year and supporting staff.
Students take responsibility for distributing food and coordinating the clear‑up.
Students publicly express gratitude to peers, building confidence, community, and relational bonds.
Family lunch is much more than a way to ensure students are fed. It is a core vehicle for building character, cultural capital, and a powerful sense of collective pride and belonging.
This is a significant investment—financially, operationally, and in staffing. But it reflects Q3 Langley’s boldness and the value they place on the holistic development of the child.
Curriculum innovation
Another bold move is their curriculum structure: three 90‑minute lessons per day, with every teacher teaching only their single specialist subject.
This maximises:
depth and breadth of content
teacher expertise
time for co‑planning and responsive curriculum design
The trade‑off is a potentially narrower curriculum, especially for creative subjects. But Q3 Langley embraces this identity and, in their own words, is happy to be “a Marmite school”.
Key takeaway: Bold innovation—across curriculum, culture, and pastoral systems—can have a transformative impact on outcomes.
Ark Victoria Academy
The research base around the importance of great teachers is vast, but you don’t need to be an expert to recognise that excellent teaching is the single biggest lever for high‑quality education. Ark Victoria knows this deeply and acts on it. My three key takeaways:
1. A purpose anchored in the community
The school is rooted in the community it serves. Ela McSorley FCCT spoke with passion about the school’s journey and the shared purpose driving staff: to provide a life of opportunity for their community. A clear, collective purpose is the foundation on which great teachers thrive—and great outcomes follow.
2. Culture first
A culture of excellence is both the starting point and the heartbeat of the school. Staff “sweat the small stuff,” understanding their contribution to something bigger than themselves: “I am part of a sum that is greater than the parts.”
3. “Drill it ’til you kill it”
Teachers ensure core knowledge is embedded before moving on. This was evident in every classroom. The approach communicated to students that they matter, and students responded with high levels of engagement.
My takeaway: It’s not just about belonging—it’s about mattering, as framed by Mohamed Abdallah’s Mattering Model. Ark Victoria has mastered this.
Harborne Academy
Harborne Academy has been on a powerful improvement journey. The new building incorporates elements of the old as a conscious reminder of its story—rising like a phoenix from past challenges. Today, it is a popular choice within its community, offering a genuinely comprehensive education surrounded by grammar and independent schools.
The key theme at Harborne is leadership conviction. Headteacher Sarah Ross is unwavering in her belief that teachers are the single greatest lever for improvement. As an example her commitment to valuing, developing, and looking after staff is evident in several practical policies:
Guaranteed P1 or P5 non‑contact: allowing staff autonomy to start later or leave earlier once a week.
No before‑school meetings: and very few whole‑staff meetings overall.
One‑page rule: key documents must fit on a single page in no smaller than Arial 11.
Flexible absence requests: enabling staff to attend their own children’s performances, sports days, and important events.
These approaches contribute to very high staff retention, with many colleagues returning to Harborne after working elsewhere.
My takeaway: Know yourself, what you know to be true, and wear that conviction on your sleeve, and others will follow. We all need clarity of vision above anything else. Without this nothing moves forward.
Key Takeaway: The Power of Mattering
Across all three schools, a common thread emerges: mattering.
Mohamed Abdallah frames this through a simple hierarchy:
Inclusion: I’m able to join the team
Belonging: I feel part of the team
Mattering: My contribution matters to the team
Schools that deliberately design for mattering hold a powerful lever for closing the disadvantage gap.
If we can use a metaphor of a brick wall to describe an educational institution – we normally focus mainly on the bricks. The policies, structures, curricular, resources. But ultimately, it all comes down to people and their connections. Policies, structures, and curricula matter—but they do not drive outcomes on their own. It’s the human glue, the relationships, the mortar between the bricks, that makes the difference.
We must focus on fostering cultures that recognise people as our greatest asset and leverage their connections to drive forward our mission. Some of the greatest school leaders in our country are achieving the most successful outcomes for some of our most disadvantaged students because they understand this and lead in this way.
Last week, I was privileged to visit some of the top-performing schools in the country as part of the Southwest100 leadership school study tour.
The four schools were:
• Ark Greenwich Free School
• Reach Academy Feltham
• Reach Academy Hanworth Park
• Mulberry School for Girls (Tower Hamlets)
All four are among the highest-performing schools in the country.
All graded Outstanding.
All with a proportion of disadvantaged pupils above the national average.
This blog post is a summary of what I learned from the experience.
Why this matters
The ‘disadvantage gap’ in the South West is worse than the national average at all stages. This leadership study tour was an incredible opportunity to explore what these schools are doing to successfully close those gaps and provide a life of opportunity for all their pupils.
To ensure we maximised the opportunities provided by the tour, we were directed to use specific observational foci based on school vision, values, cultural levers, relationships, and interactions.
Ark Greenwich Free School
What we saw was exceptional academic pace, rigour, and challenge, underpinned by razor-sharp and well-established routines. Utter consistency embedded across the school. At the risk of oversimplifying what is actually an incredibly sophisticated achievement, my single key takeaway was this: what exceptional outcomes can be achieved when an exceptional whole-school culture of expectation and challenge remains at the very centre of everything—strategically and operationally.
Example:
In one Year 10 science class, I timed the sequence for:
• Posing a question
• Turn and talk
• Checking for understanding using whiteboards
• Reviewing, clarifying, and correcting with a choral response
Time taken: 3 minutes (180 seconds)!
I watched this same cycle repeated five times to build on the concept and deepen understanding. I looked closely at participation levels around the room—I genuinely could not catch a single child who was more than a second out at any stage. Not a second of learning was wasted. When not directly engaged in independent deliberate practice, all students (without exception) adopted a ‘scholar’ pose.
We visited six different lessons, and this experience was consistent in all.
Reach Academy Feltham & Reach Academy Hanworth Park
We saw sky-high ambition and exceptional academic self-belief—in the students themselves and in what staff know they can push students towards. Rigour was underpinned by exceptionally well-established levels of trust, shared values, and belonging.
Example:
Students interact with teachers, their learning, and one another through well-embedded, codified forms of non-verbal communication:
• Clicking fingers – to signal agreement or encourage peers, especially when struggling
• Wiggling fingers – to express appreciation for the quality of an answer or effort
• Pivoting fists with outstretched thumb and little finger – to agree with statements.
• Placing closed fists upon one another repeatedly – to indicate they have something to build upon the current point
Teachers call their classes ‘Team’ and use this term in instruction. First-name terms are used throughout, including when students speak directly to staff—even headteachers.
Mulberry School for Girls
A school with an exceptionally well-established shared sense of purpose, demonstrated in its curriculum, systems, processes, and day-to-day interactions. I saw powerful young women (from some of the toughest socioeconomic contexts in the country) owning their space and futures.
Example:
We saw sixth-form students lead reading interventions and coach younger students. The texts were carefully chosen publications exploring key elements of the school’s values, vision, and ethos—written by or about powerful women from ethnic minorities. What was beautiful and humbling was how key terms and ideas were discussed and explored, expertly and gently guided by the older students. As the father of a young woman myself, witnessing this had a profound emotional impact on me.
Summary
So, what did these four schools have in common, apart from their context of socioeconomic deprivation and outstanding outcomes?
They all had unquestioning and unshakeable ambition for every student—bar none. The origin and central power source of this ethos was unquestionably leadership itself, starting at the very top and cascading down.
What Does This Mean for Me?
We were encouraged to reflect on the implications of what we learned for our own values, conceptions, assumptions, and practices as leaders, based on the ‘4 Ps’:
1. Purpose – Why am I a school leader?
2. Presence – How do I show up day to day?
3. Practice – What do I do day to day?
4. Perspective – What shapes how I think?
My Responses to Key Questions
What values or convictions did the leaders embody that resonate with my own?
The passion with which they lead. How they wear their passion and purpose on their sleeves. How this infects the staff, the students, and the very atmosphere of the school.
What did I notice about how leaders build trust, communicate, and hold others accountable?
Providing a clear vision, along with constant and unrelenting articulation of the why behind every process and protocol. Leading by example and walking that talk every day, in every interaction.
Which routines or systems felt most intentional and worth adapting in my own setting?
Tangible, practical, codified mechanisms by which students connect and engage with their learning and one another—building a strong, shared, and inclusive sense of belonging.
How has this week challenged or expanded my view of great leadership?
Great leadership, perhaps above all else, is about being present every day. Prioritising time and capacity to observe and sweat the small stuff—the intentional, codified, visible consistencies that underpin and communicate shared values and purpose in every moment and interaction.
Our next Study Tours
We will complete two other national school study tours later this year (locations TBC) and even have the incredible opportunity for an international tour in New York, exploring how leaders achieve exceptional outcomes in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.
If you’re reading this and thinking what an incredible opportunity the national #100 leadership programmes are—you’re correct! I strongly recommend them.
Unfortunately, Southwest100 is in its last year as its 100 leaders have been selected. However, depending on where you are in the country, the following might be available for you to apply for their next rounds:
I was fortunate to have attended the DfE RISE regional South West conference on Attendance last month in which fresh research on the impact of absence on attainment was explored. At the same time DfE published a report on the impact of attendance on academic achievement.
This fresh DfE research on the impact of attendance on academic achievement, is a crucial tool for schools up and down the country facing an attendance chasm that has opened in the wake of the sociological shock wave of the pandemic. A shock wave that still ripples outwards far and wide, and affects (as it always does) the most disadvantaged families and regions the most.
Within it are some insights that not only remind us of the far reaching impact of persistent absence on lifelong outcomes, but also provide a secure evidence base to support strategic attendance leads in schools and trust, to raise the profile of attendance as a strategic priority when reviewing and evaluating school improvement planning and informing budget planning as a result.
One key insight discussed is the fact that severely absent pupils, those with less than 50% attendance, account for less than 25% of the overall school absences nationally, and yet the the students that fall between the 95 – 90% account for nearly 50% of the overall school absence figures. Put in simple terms early intervention at scale is where we need to be focusing. Prevention very much better than cure here!
Page 29 has a useful summary chart on the impact of absence on KS4. Specifically, odds ratios of achieving grade 5 in Eng & Maths compared to peers in other attendance bands.
The variation between 100-95% & 95-90% & 90-85% is stark and demonstrates the significant impact on P8 for our schools.
With students in the top 95-100% band being 1.9 times more likely than students in the 90-95% band to achieve at least grade 5 in English & Maths, and 3 times more likely than students in the 85-90% band.
During the conference the lifelong impact of persistent absence was presented through DfE research based on the comparison of outcome of students graduating from key stage 4 in 2008. Student who are now 28 years old.
The findings were a stark reminder of the power of education to close the advantage gap and why attendance is the absolute priority in that aim….
Persistently absent students in years 10 and 11, could earn on average £10,000 a year less than their peers with near perfect attendance.
Persistently absent students are 60% less likely to be employed at 28.
For each additional day of absence in years 7-11, a student could miss out on an average of £750 in future lifetime earnings.
DfE research infographic on the impact of school absence on lifelong earning potential and employment.
This research, and presenting this stark picture in relation to our own attendance banding, by year groups, at our own schools (available on our DfE summary reports) could be a useful tool and starting point when launching the emerging strategic prioritisation of attendance with your staff & families.
Retrieval practice has become the staple of classroom practice.
Now that the last two years have really allowed us to develop a deeper appreciation of how technology can enhance teaching and learning, how can we utilise digital technologies to support retrieval practice in particular?
Before we attempt to go any further, at this point the definition of learning from the perspective of cognitive science could prove useful:
‘The long-term retention of knowledge, and the ability to transfer it to different contexts’. (1)
Although a definition of learning is infinitely more nuanced than just this – it is fair to say learning therefore is heavily reliant on the retention of information. To understand how we can utilise technology to support this we must first understand how memory works.
There are two elements to our memory. Our working memory and our long-term memory.
Our working memory processes and responds to information in real time and is limited processing only 3 or 4 separate pieces of information at any given point. Our long-term memory, on the other hand is virtually infinite. Accessing information from this memory bank is dependent on any given piece of information’s storage strength and retrieval strength. (2)
Both the storage strength and retrieval strength of any piece of information is dependent on the interaction of both your short term ‘working’ memory, and your long-term memory.
For example: If you have ever taken part in a pub quiz, you may be familiar with the sensation of knowing that you know the answer to a question, but just can’t quite pull it out from your memory bank …’What’s the name of that person in that film, you know ..he was also in that other one …with you know who…it’s on the top of my tongue’. This is an example of piece of information that has a high storage strength – but conversely a low retrieval strength.
Have you ever had to try to remember a password to a school network computer having returned from a summer holiday? It’s often common for teachers to have to reset their passwords on the first day back after a summer break, as they have simply forgotten it over the summer break.
The is an example high retrieval strength but low storage strength (if unused). In this example it’s easy to see that lack of regular use, or regular retrieval, makes it much harder to recall.
We store information more effectively through regular retrieval practice, and specifically when this process also allows for the development of a schema (or network of connections) of this information in our minds. Information must be regularly retrieved from our long term memory to ensure that it remains readily available to our working memory. Other wise we simply forget it. Put in its most basic terms – use it or loose it!
This is illustrated in by Ebbinghau’s forgetting curve (1885) (3)
In 1885 Herman Ebbinghaus conducted a experiment whereby he attempted to memorise a series of abstract and meaningless combinations of sets of 3 letters. He then attempted to see how well he could remember them at set subsequent time periods. He used the results to plot the following graph. This graph is what is commonly refers today as ‘the forgetting curve’.
Ebbinghau’s forgetting curve (1885)
From this he developed the following formula to illustrate his hypothesis
r = t/s
R - retention of information (memory) T - time S - strength of the information (retrieval strengths)
His experiment demonstrated that memory loss is exponential. That is to say that the rare of loss is most significant shortly after the initial learning. He also discovered that this affect could be countered through ‘over learning’. The process of repeated practice of something more often that that which is normally required to learn it, significantly reduces the rate of memory loss, as the information then develops greater storage strength. We know know this process of repeated practise as retrieval practice.
The field of neuroscience and specifically the theory of neuroplasticity may provide further insight as to why this might occur.
Neuroplasticity described the ability of the brain to re-organise its own wiring as a result of external stimuli.
Neuroplasticity was once thought to only manifested self during early childhood, when young developing brain, through external stimuli Such as human interaction play help form the very structure of the neural pathways within the brain. Subsequent research however has demonstrated that this process is not limited only to the child brain but continues, although to a lesser extent on into adulthood.
Neuro plasticity can be observed into different forms; functional plasticity – when a brain has received a trauma another result need to rebuild itself, and structural plasticity – when a brain’s structure is altered by the influence of external stimuli. This second form is most of interest to us as educationalist.
There are two processes the contribute to neuro plasticity that are particular interest when considering its implications on learning.
Synaptic plasticity and which refers to how brain cells connect with one another, and non-synaptic plasticity – which refers to changes in the brain cells themselves. Before we can describe both of these processes properly, it is necessary to determine the anatomy of a brain cell.
The Anatomy of a Neuron
Your brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurones. Each neurone is made up of a main cell body which contains its nucleus. Off this main cell body are a series of tentacles called dendrites. another part of the neuron is a long extended wire named it axon. At the end of this axon another series of tentacles named the axon terminals.
When your brain functions neurones transmit small signals in the form of electrical and chemical impulses from one neurone, along its length, onto other neighbouring ones. Much like an electronic circuit each neurone acts like a transistor. Dendrites extending out from the main cell body receive these impulses from neighbouring neurone and transmit this electrical impulse onto other neighbouring neurones out across its axon onto, and out form, it’s axon terminals. The neighbouring neurones receive this impulse through their dendrites, and so on.
In this way different parts of the brain associated with different functions are able to communicate via this highly complex arrangement of circuits. As you learn a new skill or topic, and the more often you use the specific circuit for that, the more often that specific electrical circuit is fired. Over time through lots of repetitive practice That circuit is strengthened in two different ways.
Synaptic plasticity – The more often that particular circuit is fired the connections, or synapses, between the dendrites and axons terminals are strengthened. Thus, allowing any further impulse to be carried across more easily. (4)
Synaptic Plasticity
Non-synaptic plasticity – similarly, the more often that particular circuit is fired, and the more often electrical and chemical impulse travel along each neurone’s axon, neighbouring cells named Astrocytes, detect a small chemical discharge from the axon is in themselves, these Astocytes then send small chemical messages on to another group of cells named Oligodendrocytes. These Oligodendrocytes begin to wrap the axon itself in layers of a fatty substance named Myelin. This Myelin acts as a form of insulation, much like insulated electrical wire, further aiding the efficiency of the electrical impulses travelling along the length of that particular arrangement of neurones, for that specific task. The Oligodendrocytes are able to lay these layers of Myelin by repurposing the proteins made available from Myelin available by less prioritised neural pathways. Taking us back to the ‘you use it or lose it’ idea of knowledge and information explored earlier. In essence, this is the physiological process of the brain rearranging itself to optimise its own internal communication when exposed to the stimulus of repetitive practice. In essence, learning made physiologically visible. (5)
Non-synaptic plasticity
I developed this video explaining Neuroplasticity for our students, so that they could appreciate what happens in our brains during repeated retrieval practice, so that they were more invested in it.
Neuroplasticity – what happens in your brain during retrieval practice.
This understanding of Neuroplasticity all leads onto the idea of what cognitive scientists concerned with ‘memory’ refer to as desirable difficulties.
Information is stored more securely, with both greater storage and retrieval strength, if the brain has to work harder to retrieve it. This might have something to do with the fact that the brain may have evolved the need to prioritise key information, and as a result, places greater value in certain piece of information. We can capitalise on this as educators by trying to ensure when we guide regular retrieval practice, we pitch the challenge delicately between two extremes. 1), so easy that the value of the information is not recognised by the brain as important and not stored effectively, and 2) so difficult that the information is not retrieved at all. The recognise degree of challenge is thought to be to be able to aim to achieve a success rate for of approximately 80% among your students.
So, in summary regular retrieval practice pitched at the right level of challenge, and delivered at the right times, can dramatically counter the impact of the forgetting curve. Also allowing our brains to acknowledge the information as important and therefore making the information, both long-lasting and readily available to us for subsequent recall and use.. So how can all this information helps in the classroom?
Frequent low stakes testing must be a staple for our learners to provide optimal conditions. In terms of frequency these can be short term (knowledge organiser based homework – exit passes questions), mid term (prior lesson content lesson starter quiz), or longer review (learning cycle assessment quiz).
In each of these examples we will explore a number of opportunities made available by technology and will scrutinise their validity to enhance lending opportunities using the SAMR model.
Short-term retrieval practice
Knowledge organisers have become more popular within schools as an effective way to coordinate their students homework, as these allow the students to practice their knowledge of the essential key facts that underpin the learning in a given topic.
Online quizzing can provide a powerful and engaging opportunity for a child to test their knowledge of a topic area and can complement the use of knowledge organisers in this way. Using an online eform platform, such as Google or Microsoft forms, to produce quizzes allows teachers to set low stakes assessments, and more importantly an opportunity for the students to practice their recall on a topic. In addition to this the quiz can be pre-populated with auto feedback, and question branching – that will direct your learner to a set of subsequent questions depending on their answer to previous questions.
When used in conjunction this auto feedback and question branching can be directed to provide some powerful opportunities for the students to self identify areas of strength and weakness of the topic content. If this wasn’t enough for you – online eform platforms also provide analytical data that can enable the teacher to not only identify areas of strength and weakness of student’s knowledge covering a topic, but a whole cohort of students’ areas of strength or weakness covering a particular topic, thus providing further areas of focus for future lesson planning.
Example: Let’s look at an example of how a online quiz form can support regular retrieval practice in conjunction with the use of a knowledge organiser. In this example a knowledge organiser is used to develop an understanding of the formal visual elements of photography early in a GCSE Photography course.
The Knowledge Organsier
This online form quiz is deployed a number of times and in the following order to help secure the required foundation knowledge.
This video is simply a narrated video of the PowerPoint used to create the original knowledge organiser, recorded within MS PowerPoints own ‘record’ feature. The form quiz is embedded within this video requiring it’s completion at the end of the video.
This provides immediate retrieval practice of the content just watched, provides auto feedback to the students of their success rate, and identifies incorrect answers – and in each case the correct one, and let’s the teacher know which students completed the quiz (and therefore watched the video), and the analytics of the correct and incorrect answers across the cohort of students.
In the next lesson the form quiz is used as a lesson starter with the opportunity to view the knowledge organiser for 3 minutes before turning it over and completing the form quiz again as a silent lesson starter.
The following lesson the same form quiz is used again as a lesson starter but without organiser and with a randomised order of questions.
The following lesson students are set the task of developing their own quizzes for another peer in the class using the knowledge organisers.
The method above could be deployed with any topic Photosynthesis, Coastal Erosion, the War of the Roses etc. The point is that the level of challenge was pitched at greater levels at each point to counter the forgetting curve and to help secure the knowledge.
The other point is that although this provided 4 lessons, and in this case, 4 weeks of regular low stakes retrieval practice for the students, there was only one form created by the teacher to achieve this. Added to this, once created, this resource is available to other classes studying the same course, and is available for future courses in perpetuity.
Quiz question branching An extra layer of sophistication to the process can be achieved included by adding question ‘branching’ to the online form quiz.
Question branching provides the functionality to your quiz that directs your students onto different questions depending on their answer. For instance – an incorrect answer could indicated an assumption that needs to be corrected before they can proceed any further. The form quizze’s auto feedback can be set to immediately point out their incorrect assumption, and then direct them to further questions that prior their understanding of this specific element of the topic further.
Before we get too excited about this we must determine using the SAMR model, if this approach genuinely provides opportunities for enhance learning?
Surely these eforms provide only a substitution for the student testing cells using the read,-colour,-right,-check method? In other words just a different way of doing the same thing. At a push one can argue that this could be considered an ‘augmentation’ – making the process slightly easier for a practical perspective? This is a fair initial assessment. However when we also consider the impact of the question branching and auto feedback, and the ability to gauge whole cohort understanding of different areas of topic content then we begin to move from and enhancement, to the transformation of Practice – at the very least a ‘modification’ level. That’s great, I here you say. But when am I going to find the time to create bespoke quizzes from scratch and then create all the auto feedback and branching involved to make this worth doing?!
I would argue two points in response to this:
1) Working in partnership with another member of staff or a wider dept team you can easily distributing and delegate the production of these quizzes covering different elements of different topics throughout the year. You could even set the students the task of creating an online quiz of other students within your class or in another class. This process would involve them reviewing the very content that they are revising and its creation.
2) In addition to this, sections of quizzes can be copied and pasted, and even the order of the questions set to be randomised. In this way, quizzes can be recycled, reused and can be adapted to keep the challenge exactly at the right pitch. As you can see in the example earlier only one form quiz was created that provided a month of retrieval practice for the students.
Longer term retrieval practice
Mid- and longer-term retrieval practice can also play a crucial role in further cementing key route learnt knowledge to support future deeper learning from curricular over longer time periods. This could be as part of a formative mid learning cycle or a summative end project review at the end of a learning cycle.
There are a number of studies that have researched what is now referred to as ‘game based learning’. Game based learning is the deployment of certain strategies aimed at securing high levels of engagement from the user by introducing events of jeopardy and reward. There are a number of different game-based learning platforms that have emerged in recent years. One very successful leaning platform that has deployed this theory effectively is the well know language learning platform ‘Duo-lingo’. Duolingo gained popularity during the first lockdown as many people used the opportunity this time provided to try to learn a new language.
Duolingo introduces topic or theme-based vocabulary and supporting grammar in a sequence of progressively mite complex set of topics. An accruing points-based system supported by a competitive leader board adds a competitive element, and the element of jeopardy is brought in with the opportunity to earn more bonus points at key points with an opportunity to ‘double or quits’ your points for the next section. Game based learning supports regular retrieval practice by introducing heightened sense of pressure in jeopardy contributing to what cognitive scientist would refer to it as desirable difficulties during regular retrieval practice discussed earlier. Game base learning as a result, significantly increases engagement and motivation among students.
There are a number of platforms available to teachers to develop your own low stakes assessments that capitalise on game baseline theory. Perhaps the most well-known are Kahoot and Quizlett.
Kahoot is a platform that via an app that can be downloaded by your students, and by use of a generated shared code, students can access your specific bespoke created Kahoot interactive quiz from their own mobile phones duirng the lesson. The results to each question appear in live time projected onto the classroom board via your own teacher computer, and thus adding to the drama and theatre!
Quizlett is another well developed and established game-based learning platform that provides the oppertunity for teachers to author their own quizzes for regular retrieval practice of set topics, by adding a team based competitive element.
This promotes heightened challenging and the development of desirable difficulties by testing and encouraging accuracy over speed. If a team chooses an incorrect answer, they must start over from the beginning. As with Kahoot the ongoing progress of the various teams within the class are displayed as an interactive leader board. If anyone in the team gets an answer wrong the team is taken back to the start of the leader board – thus building in the jeopardy.
The interactive and collaborative nature of both of these two examples are what male them both such great opportunities for more longer term retrieval practice.
Other examples of longer-term retrieval practice tools are digital revision cards such as those made available by both the learning platform SENICA, and the BBC GCSE bitesize revision app, that allows students to enter their exam board, which populates the revision cards with the corresponding topic content for that exam board. The revision card app is able to determine areas of strength and weakness within subject topic content from the users range of correct and incorrect answers, and to then return a greater number of questions at greater frequency for those areas of the topic that the app ha automatically assessed as requiring further retrieval to support further strengthening of subsequent recall.
So how do these examples fair under the scrutiny of the SAMR model? Its clear that the ability to automatically assess and determine areas of strength and weaknesses of recall of facts across a topic, and then automatically direct and focus further targeted retrieval practice in real time, are simply not possible using conventional and non-digital formats, and therefore this approach demonstrates a transformation of practice at the very least at the ‘modification’ level and perhaps even the ‘redefinition’ level.
The use of all of the new digital technologies and associated platforms that we have come to know and love over the course of the pandemic – are now poised to provide fresh new horizons of pedagogical approaches, not only to support learning, but to reduce workload too.
“Without an understanding of human cognitive architecture instruction is blind.”
-John Sweller (1)
Our profession has gained a great deal from cognitive psychology. The evidence base associated with this field of research has helped to identify and establish some emerging pedagogical practice in response.
But how can we utilise this understanding of cognitive theory to optimise learning through our use of technology in the virtual learning environment, and what does this offer our pedagogical practice teaching in the ‘new normal’?
Before we attempt to answer this question, it is best, perhaps to summarise the principles that underpin the theory that this post is based upon.
Learning as defined by cognitive science
There are two elements to our memory. Our working memory and our long-term memory.
Our working memory describes our cognitive capacity to receive, process and respond to information at any given time. Our working memory is fundamentally pretty limited and only capable of processing 3 or 4 separate pieces of information at any given time (2).
Our long-term memory, on the other hand, is infinite in its capacity. However, accessing information and knowledge from this infinite long-term memory is very much determined on the interaction between our short-term memory and our long-term memory.
Our long-term memory organises the storage of information within it into a specific set of arrangements based on relationships of information, or ‘schema’. The formation of this schema is aided by our working memory and how our working memory receives and processes information.
Learning therefore, as defined by Cognitive Science is- The long-term retention of knowledge, and the ability to transfer it to different contexts. (2)
Multimedia instruction has implications for supporting the way in which our working memory processes information, and through that process, supports the formation of the wider schema stored for later retrieval in our long-term memory. (3)
In a recent article (4) in ‘Impact’, the Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching, the well-known educational psychologist Richard Mayer explains that the cognitive theory of multimedia learning is based on three key ideas:
The dual channel principle: The human information-processing system contains separate channels for verbal and visual information.
Limited capacity principle: Only a few items of information can be processed in either of these channels at any one time.
Active processing principle: ‘Meaningful learning requires appropriate cognitive processing during learning, including attending to relevant information, mentally organising it into a coherent structure, and integrating it with relevant prior knowledge’.
The trick for teachers, he argues, is designing this multimedia instruction in such a way that it not only presents the relevant material, but also guides the learners cognitive processing of that material.
Here is an overview table of the principles, their effect size, and some suggestions of how these principles could be practically applied to multimedia instructional design.
Using his article as a guide I decided to try to put some of the theories revealed within it into practice in the production of some of my own multimedia instruction.
My multimedia instruction example:
Along with many other schools, we are in the rapid process of up-skilling our staff, students and their families, with the use of digital technologies to access remote learning.
To support this, I developed a short online ‘Virtual School’ training course for our students and their families, to provide them with the basic foundation skills to take the first step in that journey.
Utilising a combination of applications within Microsoft’s cloud based Office365 platform, I attempted to create a piece of multimedia instruction designed to try to capitalise the ideas highlighted in Mayer’s article.
The course is presented in ‘Sway’ which is a presentation tool application within the Office 365 platform. Sway, like PowerPoint, allows both teachers and learners to develop presentations. However, what makes Sway so powerful is that you can integrate other multimedia components across a range of platforms, in a much more intuitive and user-friendly way. This app allows the auto re-format of your presentation to any device setting, and will work on any digital device without the requirement to have any particular software installed on it.
Within the sway document itself I’ve also embedded videos which have been hosted on the video sharing platform ‘Vimeo’.
The course also includes embedded quizzes using the Microsoft ‘Forms’ application. Please note: You won’t have access to the embed quizzes unfortunately as these can only accessed by our students. This method allows me to monitor who has an hasn’t completed their course, as well as gauging levels of understanding.
Mayer offers three goals to effective multimedia instructional design:
Reduce or eliminate extraneous processing
Managing essential processing
Foster generative processing
Reduce or eliminate extraneous processing:
This basically means eliminating the potential of any cognitive processing the learner might face that is superfluous to the learning. This makes perfect sense of course, as working memory is limited, if they are having to process information that is not essential to the learning it will simply reduce the capacity for their working memory to process information that is essential.
In the video in our virtual school training course I tried to keep graphics as simple as possible, avoided using text, and have avoided the temptation to include any music.
In the instructions that bridge the videos and quizzes you’ll see the key information has been highlighted using combination of colour and font style change.
I planned my script in carefully in advance, considering what information was key, and in what order to transfer that information. I then developed my PowerPoints (that I used to screen record the videos) so that as I advanced my PowerPoint through the animations of the graphics, they were in sync to the key information as I narrated them.
In your own practice:
Consider how to chunk up the topic and how to sequence the learning.
Plan and script of your instruction in advance as a result of this sequencing.
Find simple symbols or icons via an image search online, to gather visual prompts of the key elements to use to emphasise and visualise key points and relationships.
Set up your PowerPoint in the same order as your script, using your prepared graphics.
Screen record your self narrating through a PowerPoint using an online video recording tool like Vidyard, Loom or Stream.
Managing essential processing:
This means managing the key and essential information so that it is cognitively palatable for the leaner. Making sure that the information is delivered in sequenced bite sized chunks that build on from each other.
I considered how to break the course down and thought carefully about what key principles needed to be established before subsequent information could be introduced. For example – understanding the basic principles that underpin cloud-based file sharing would be essential to before understanding any of the processes introduced later, so this was the objective of unit1.
Each video is followed by a short task to enable them to practice the information to further build their understanding and to develop the associated schema in their long-term memory.
The quiz also enables the opportunity to test their understanding and further support the development of schema in their long-term memory by creating desirable cognitive difficulties soon after their practice, thus improving retrieval strength and durability.
In your own practice:
Consider using platform to combine different pieces of multimedia into one format –such as Microsoft Sway. Using Sway you can remotely deliver the content sequentially, to include both instruction and retrieval practice at each stage using (Google forms or Microsoft Forms) quizzes that auto-mark and auto-feedback.
Foster generative processing:
This basically means designing the instruction in such a way that the learner can make sense of the presented material.
In the videos I tried to keep the descriptions of the technology and processes as user-friendly and as pupil speak as possible. I also tried to keep my voice calm, slow as well paced as possible emphasising keywords with clear intonations to add emphasis and connections to key words, and in synchronisation with the graphics.
In your own practice:
Using a screen cast platform like Viyard, Loom or Steam include your own face as a thumbnail alongside the screen cast video. This helps keeps a human connection between you and your class, even when not live teaching
The feedback from the course so far has been very positive we are beginning to see significant gains in terms of the engagement in the virtual learning environment, as measured by the amount of frequency of returned work among our students.
It’s clear that technology provides some incredible opportunities for developing multi media instructional design to further enhance our students learning experiences.
However, the full appreciation and understanding of what cognitive science offers us in its extensive evidence base is essential in underpinning our approach when utilising digital technology when teaching in the ‘new normal’.
Ofsted’s Annual Report for 2023/24, released on December 5, 2024, provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of education, children’s services, and skills in England.
Key findings include:
Improvements in Education Quality
• Leadership and Teaching: Many schools have demonstrated strong leadership and sustained improvements in teaching quality, particularly in urban areas. However, challenges persist in maintaining consistent standards across all regions.
• Inspection Outcomes: Approximately 89% of schools were rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ in their most recent inspections, indicating a positive trend in educational quality. However, the proportion of ‘Outstanding’ schools has slightly decreased from 18% to 16%.
Challenges in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP)
• System Strain: The SEND system is under significant pressure due to increasing numbers of children with identified needs. This has led to delays in accessing specialist services and placements, with some pupils placed in alternative provisions as a temporary measure.
• Quality Concerns: Support for pupils with SEND varies across educational settings, with some schools overly focusing on immediate task completion rather than addressing underlying knowledge gaps.
Rise in ‘Flexi-Schooling’ and Attendance Issues
• Flexi-Schooling: There is a growing trend of ‘flexi-schooling,’ where children receive a mix of at-home and in-school education. Ofsted has raised concerns that this practice may lead to children missing out on essential education.
• Attendance Rates: Persistent absenteeism remains a concern, with nearly a fifth of pupils in England missing at least 10% of school sessions during the autumn and spring terms of 2023/24.
Staffing Challenges
• Recruitment and Retention: Schools and early years settings face difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified staff, impacting the quality of education and care provided. This issue is particularly acute in rural and disadvantaged areas.
Early Years and Further Education
• Early Years: While early years providers continue to show progress, there is pressure to expand services in response to rising demand. Staff knowledge in supporting children with additional needs remains an area for improvement.
• Further Education: Further education colleges are praised for aligning skills training with local economic needs, though disparities in access to high-quality provision persist.
Overall, the report acknowledges the dedication of education and social care professionals in serving children and young people but emphasizes the need for continued efforts to address these challenges to ensure equitable and high-quality education for all.
Following this interesting and informative analysis of DfE 2023 data re: school suspensions post on X by Aron King @9000lives_org, I was drawn to reflect upon what all school behaviour leads are already well aware of. The significant spike rise in suspension nationally – post Covid.
The question is how we deal with this nationally and as individual schools and trusts?
On one hand – suspensions are impactful on the students themselves and given that they can disproportionately effect the most vulnerable students, and looking at the 21/22 spike, are they working to support behaviour and engagement?
However, on the other hand – clear and consistent boundaries and consequences are an essential element of the support to enable students with challenging and traumatic lives to find the stability to begin to develop the emotional resilience to thrive.
The key in my view is that suspensions should be used as a consequence and a deterrent for behaviour, to support a positive culture whole school, and to support the individual child to learn about actions and consequences, but this can only be effective when this is coupled with the right support.
Support that works forensically to ensure that any additional needs identified are met effectively, with out any compromises on boundaries and consequences (not withstanding reasonable adjustments). That parental/carer engagement and support is also fostered, and a partnership formed.
The challenge of course is capacity of resources and the associated funding, and the ability to prioritise this ethos with a wider strategy. This will differ for different schools in different contexts and at different stages of their journeys.
One such response I have developed in my current role is to deploy Social & Emotional Learning Programmes.
The Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit evidence base has this to say regarding Social & Emotional Learning.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions seek to improve pupils’ decision-making skills, interaction with others and their self-management of emotions, rather than focusing directly on the academic or cognitive elements of learning.
SEL interventions might focus on the ways in which students work with (and alongside) their peers, teachers, family or community.
Social and emotional learning approaches have a positive impact, on average, of 4 months’ additional progress in academic outcomes over the course of an academic year. This finding, however, has very low security, so schools should be especially careful to monitor the efficacy of SEL approaches in their settings.
We track recidivist behaviours to enable a graduated response. Within this graduated response sits the deployment of these external SEL specialist mentors from a local partner organisation.
Selected students have a weekly hour long 1:1 session. These sessions last for approximately for a full term. The start of which we use Boxall Profile Assessment to identify specific objectives for the SEL. This Boxall profile is also used to determine progress with the SEL.
Having started at my current school at the start of the previous academic year, and deploying this strategy for the first time in Jan, I have been able to compare the total number of days suspended of each student that participated in both the Autumn and Summer terms last academic year. Here are the results:
Of the total number of students took part in the SEL intervention programme, of which 65% were disadvantaged students.
The total number of days suspended were significantly reduced by 51%
There was an elimination of suspensions altogether observed in 26% of the students.
There was a significant reduction (greater than 50%) of total days suspended observed in 65% of the students.
There was a marginal reduction of total days suspended observed in 9% of the students.
There was no reduction or an increase in total days suspended in 26% of the students.
As you can see this strategy has begun to bare fruit and I am now exploring how this can be scaled up further.
The next phase of our journey is to further develop our support of and engagement of the families of our students presenting recidivists behaviour. We will be inviting key parents and carers in for regular peer support sessions where we hope to provide information and support, on how they can support their own child’s SEL in partnership with the school.
The current data demonstrates that the number of suspensions is increasing nationally and there is a danger that suspensions themselves could be becoming normalised. The danger of this is that the ability of schools to develop effective behaviour management to build strong school culture becomes greatly impinged.
Nationally I think Trusts, Headteachers, and behaviour leads have the answer…
This is a social justice issue and as with teaching, high expectations for all, regardless of their circumstances must be taught to the top and individual students support scaffolded to meet that objective. The catch is that this requires sufficient resourcing. If this is a National picture we need additional resourcing at a National level.
Is it too dramatic to suggest that in many years to come, when we look back we’ll define this pandemic as marking the end of one educational epoch and the dawn of another?
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
I find this highly topical of education at the moment where, even under the partial reopening of schools, a blended learning approach has temporarily, at the least, become the best fit model of educational provision for most schools.
In a recent BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Disrupted’ (part of series 20 of the ‘The Digital Human’) (1), James Burke and Pico Iyer discuss whether the pandemic provides the opportunity to embrace disruption, and to reflect on what new ways of being are available to us on the other side. They argue that this pandemic may not necessarily lead us in a different direction, but rather act as a catalyst in propelling our society in a direction that we were already heading, but in a far shorter space of time.
What pedagogical opportunities are therefore opening to us in education as we dust ourselves off and look forward to a future where a blended learning approach is likely to play a more common and widespread part of mainstream education?
SAMR A tool that could help us in exploring how to adapt our pedagogy to the digital realm is the SAMR model.
The SAMR Model is a framework created by Dr. Ruben Puentedura (2) that categorizes four different increasing degrees of technology integration. The letters “SAMR” stand for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.
According to this suggested model the first two (Substitution, Augmentation) are ‘enhancements’ to practice and the latter two (Augmentation, Modification) represent ‘transformation’ of practice.
Enhancing my practice
Substitution – Digital technologies are used to replace traditional methods that, although useful and perfectly valid, have no significant implications to the learning beyond traditional classroom practice.
Augmentation – Digital technology provides opportunities not achievable using traditional methods that are useful but do not have significant implications to the learning beyond traditional classroom practice.
Transforming my practice
Modification – Digital technology provides opportunities to modify the learning in ways not achievable using traditional methods.
Redefinition – Digital technology provides opportunities not achievable using traditional methods that completely redefine the way in which the students are able to access learning.
It is commonly though that this increasing scale of technological integration means that the higher two transformation levels are more advantageous and ultimately more desirable than the lower two enhancement levels. However, this is not necessarily the case. For example – if the students have not yet grasped the key concepts that underpin a topic and don’t yet have a firm foundation of the component primary facts necessary to proceed onto a collaborative enquiry-based activity then, no matter how wonderful the technology, it will have little or no impact on their learning, and could perversely turn them off altogether.
It may also be necessary both for the teacher, as well as the student, to get used to technological integration steadily over an extended period of time, to develop the confidence of the technology at each level, to then be able to take full advantage of it in the longer term.
Let’s explore SAMR using a practical example in a key stage 3 Geography topic. -Studying the effect of globalisation on global CO2 levels.
Substitution – Completing a short newspaper article in MS Word to allow the insertion of images and references links. Although useful and perfectly valid, and perhaps a little more engaging for the students, this approach has no significant implications to the learning. However, under a remote leaning environment provides the opportunity to easily share, and in the cloud, enable the teacher to provide direct feedback. All not possible using traditional hard copy documents but never the less in pedagogical terms not a significant change or redefinition of the learning process. This approach would be useful in the sense that it would enable the teacher to ensure that the students had the basic requisite ICT skills to take the next step to Augmentation.
Augmentation – Completing a presentation in MS Office 365 Sway to allow the insertion of images/videos and reference links. Not a change that in pedagogical terms is a significant modification of the learning, but this approach does allow elements of the topic to be explored and compared at greater depth than the previous method. Again, this could also provide the teacher a useful opportunity to further develop their student’s ICT skills to then introduce new technology, particularly arranging students into groups and getting them to work on shared cloud-based presentations. Supporting an element of collaboration.
Modification – The use of Google Earth to layer several different data maps on top of one another, to visualise the correlations between different factors. This step represents a key jump from ‘enhancement’ to ‘transformation’ as it provides significantly new opportunities for learning not possible using traditional classroom practice. This approach has significant implications for the student’s ability to transfer information processed in working memory into a schema on the topic in their long-term memory (3).
Redefinition – Creating a shared dynamic map using MS Excell to mathematically re-model and visualise the impact of international approaches on Global Warming in a map (4). This project-based approach would allow the students to develop arguments for the best political and economic approaches in response to rising global temperatures. This represents a complete redefinition of the learning, not only as the students are effectively reverse engineering the – study the effect to determine the cause -, to now exploring the – approach to determine the effect– . But also, are working significantly more independently. This approach is highly dependent on the students and the teacher’s confidence using the digital technology, and perhaps more importantly a sophisticated understanding of the scientific, political and economic factors underpinning both globalisation and global warming, and are both perhaps best developed through the three previous stages.
As you can see the SAMR model is useful to use as a framework when considering how you integrate technology into your teaching.
Whether you believe that this pandemic marks the transition from educational epoch to another or not, it is clear that we are all going to discover some new things along the way that collectively have implications of how we approach teaching and learning – in the ’new normal’.
I’m intending to use this blog over the coming weeks to explore the implications of the how we may now need to shift our pedagogy in the ’new normal’, by exploring:
– What cognitive psychology can tell us on how to optimise our use of technology for learning in the ’new normal’.
– Implications on Rosenshein’s Principles of instructionin the ’new normal’.
– Implications on assessment for learningin the ’new normal’.
– Implications on feedback for learningin the ’new normal’.
– Implications on fostering metacognition in our learners in the ’new normal’.
“Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe”
H. G. Wells
It has been reported, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the impact of this pandemic will impact our disadvantaged learners the greatest. Some reports in the media suggests that the marginal gains of the decade long Pupil Premium project, could now have been largely wiped out altogether. (1)
Rather deflating to say the least given how hard won this marginal gain has been to the profession. Which is why it is now more important than ever that we focus our attention and marshal our resources to ensure that the educational and pastoral needs of our most disadvantaged learners remain at the top of our minds.
Pre-Covid, supporting disadvantaged students to mitigate the impact of the barriers that contributed to their progress ‘gap’ relied mainly on what could be achieved supporting them face-to-face in the physical school.
In the ‘new normal’ the vast majority of learning can only be delivered online.
Sadly this exacerbates the educational disparity between disadvantage students and their disadvantaged peers even further. (2)
To mitigate this we need to first understand what the new or exacerbated barriers are, and their causes, before we can design and implement strategies to try to tackle them.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s recent Rapid Evidence Assessment of the impact of school closures on the attainment gap identifies two key factors affecting learning while pupils are at home:
Remote learning and parental involvement. (3)
As a school we have determined the three following key barriers for our disadvantage learners in the new virtual, or blended learning, school model.
1. Access to IT equipment
Our disadvantage students are more likely to have limited or less access to their own computers or other digital devices. If they do, these items are more likely to be older, and as a result not work as efficiently as more up to date machines.
In addition to the equipment itself we have a large rural catchment area and calculate that we could m have as many as up to 100 homes without reliable broadband Internet access.
2. Digital Literacy
Our disadvantage students are less likely to possess the higher levels of digital literacy now required to embrace new technologies and systems necessary for their new model of learning.
The levels of digital literacy among members of their family are also likely not to be as high as families where one or more of the parents work in professions reliant on high levels of digital literacy. Therefor a disparity of on hand support at home will also be a significant barrier.
3. Resilience
It is already well recognised among the profession, disadvantage learners are more likely to possess lower levels of resilience when facing challenges. It is cruelly ironic that our disadvantaged students will need bucket loads of resilience now more than ever to face the challenges of this new normal.
It takes a great deal of resilience overcome the challenges of sharing unreliable IT equipment and the patience and resolve to systematically and logically work through unpredictable and inevitable technological hick-ups whilst getting used to this new way of learning. Many will simply give up, switch off and stick their heads in the sand ….widening the disadvantaged gap further still.
What can we do about it?
We are approaching those three key problems in the following ways…
Access to IT equipment
Using a combination of coordinated eForm questionnaires, and through our frequent pastoral monitoring phone calls home, we are identifying students who have limited access to IT equipment.
We have increasing the capacity of available laptops for loan by:
• Recommissioning any available laptops we already have. • Applying for more through the Government COVID scheme (announced on the 10th April). • Redirecting school budgets – no longer being spent due to partial closure – to make available funds to purchase more laptops to make available for loan. • We are investigating the feasibility of providing mobile broadband services to those few homes that don’t have available landline broadband by talking to mobile network providers.
Digital Literacy
We have developed an online training course to support our students basic digital literacy specifically using the cloud based computing software that our blended virtual learning provision will rely upon.
We have develop and designed the course to be completed by the students and their parents/carers together. This hopefully supporting the development of the digital literacy of not only the students, but of those supporting them at home too. You can access the course to take a look here.
Right from the outset and when the schools first closed – our primary objective was to swiftly develop and maintain a well coordinated pastoral monitoring regime across the school.
For this purpose we broke our students down into one of three categories according to their broad pastoral needs.
Vulnerable students – Safeguarding Vulnerable students – SEN Disadvantaged students – Pupil Premium students identified specifically as at risk of not making expected process. Remaining students – Students not in one of the 3 categories above.
This allowed us to distribute the remote pastoral care of the students effectively across the various teams within our school, and enable us to delegate to members of staff to capitalise on their specific areas of professional expertise in the following way:
Vulnerable students – Safeguarding are been called by our safeguarding, pastoral and behaviour support team staff. This is being led and monitored by our senior member of staff responsible for safeguarding.
Vulnerable students – SEN are been called by their specific learning support key workers. This is being led and monitored by our senior member of staff responsible for SEN.
Disadvantaged students – are being called by members of staff across the whole school that volunteered, and in the hope of matching staff to students where an existing positive relationship and connection existed. This is being led and monitored by myself as senior member of staff responsible for Pupil Premium.
Remaining students – are being called by their tutors. This is being led by myself as Pastoral Lead, and monitored by our Heads of Year.
We are using these regular calls home to monitor the students access and engagement to the learning, to troubleshoot IT, to academically coach, and mentor them in terms of their welfare and mental health.
All calls are logged centrally and securely online, including a brief summary of each conversation, so that the various team leaders, and Heads of Year can maintain monitoring and quality assurance of the process.
The organisation as a whole, students and staff are all on a steep learning curve. We are finding that regular completion of work is worryingly lower than we had expected or hoped. Completion of work amongst our more disadvantaged learners is perhaps unsurprisingly less than that of their less disadvantaged peers. However we can see gradual progress on this front being made.
This is a new normal. So the sooner we get the vast majority up and running, to the extent that they are engaging with all of their work fully, the better and less of the impact on the disadvantage gap.
It is clear that schools are going to begin to have to treat ‘digital’ literacy with the same high-profile as literacy itself. ‘Digital’ literacy must now be the new literacy.
Mr Darvill 